The Home for Broken Hearts

by Rowan Coleman

  It was then that Ellen would turn to her latest book, losing herself with relief among its pages until her alarm clock sounded the official break of day.

  Bending over the edge of the bed, Ellen gathered up the pages of Allegra Howard’s latest work and carefully reordered them. She remembered with a shock of nerves that it was Thursday morning; today Allegra was due to arrive at 11:00 A.M., which meant midday, Simon had promised. As Allegra made it her business always to be an hour late to everything, Ellen was relieved that the extra time would allow the paint smells to fade, and the chaise longue was just about in position. Against all odds, she had got everything ready for her VIP guest, and even though it had taken the help of virtual strangers to do it, she was still proud of herself.

  The timing of Allegra’s stay could not have been better, since Ellen had just finished the last of the pages of her latest that Nick had sent her. She smoothed the sheets of paper out against her thighs and wondered about the book. Ellen couldn’t deny that she was enjoying it; every second that she had been immersed in Eliza’s story—a young puritan maid caught up with the passions of the Royalist captain whom she barely understood—she had been there with her, enjoying the guilty pleasure of imagining herself as the fulsome young woman with an exquisite body and beauty to match. Yet, in The Sword Erect the heroine had endured more ravishing than Ellen could remember in any other Allegra Howard novel or indeed any other book on which she had worked on the Cherished Desires list. Ellen had read only up to page thirty-three, yet poor Eliza had already had her body manhandled by three different men in the space of barely a week!

  Hannah had been only half wrong when she’d joked that these kinds of books had a strict average of sexual encounters per page that had to be met. Sexual passion and erotic fantasy were what the readers wanted, they were what Ellen wanted—but all the other things that she loved so much about Allegra Howard’s books were missing so far. Ellen wanted the adventure, the danger, the sights, smells, and sounds of a world and time gone by that Allegra conjured up so brilliantly and that made her novels more than just run-of-the mill bodice rippers. Simon had said that Allegra was having trouble with this book, and he wanted Ellen to help her get it back on track. The problem was, how did you tell a person whom you admired so very much that you thought she was getting it wrong? Particularly when all that qualified you to comment was that you enjoyed reading the books.

  Ellen sighed as she leaned back against her pillow and thought about Allegra’s formula. Allegra put all her heroines in sexual danger but they actually had sex with only one man, and by the end of the books they were not only in love with him but married to him, too, so that the usually inappropriate way that they had first become physically acquainted would be happily resolved. Still, three men in one week driven to a frenzy of desire by your mere proximity—at least it meant that Eliza knew she was alive, that the world took notice of her when she passed. The world went on outside Ellen’s window and she had very little to do with it at all; most of the time that was just the way she liked it, but every now and then she’d wonder what it would be like to be more like Eliza—or even Hannah. To live life as if the world revolved around you and you had every right to expect that it would dance to your tune. Now this house was her world, because it had been Nick’s world, too—and in many comforting ways it still was.

  Ellen looked around her bedroom. It was exactly the same as it had been a year earlier, stripped and varnished floorboards, covered here and there with faded rugs covered with roses, an ornate oval Victorian mirror that Nick had bought her hanging over the solid pine dressing table he’d spent an age stripping down just after they had moved in. The wardrobe was still full of his clothes, the drawers still crammed with his things. There was still a dirty shirt in the laundry basket that Ellen could not bring herself to wash. And it wasn’t just this room that was still so full of Nick; every room in this house was stamped with a presence that was still so strong it was almost tangible. Nick had labored long and hard over this late-Victorian house, spending all his spare time stripping off layer after layer of inappropriate wallpaper, finding just the right light plaster work to replace what had been ripped out when period detail wasn’t quite so fashionable. It was Nick who’d dragged home the three small cast-iron fireplaces that now sat comfortably over the fireplaces he’d found when ripping out plasterboard. He had lavished the same kind of attention on this house as he had on Ellen when they first met. She remembered, for a time, feeling a little jealous of the time he spent lovingly blacking his newly acquired grate, his fingers caressing their organic curves as they had once caressed hers, but now she was glad that he had spent so many months making this house his own—it was as if he still existed here in every nook and cranny.

  Ellen thought of the world outside her window, Thornfield Avenue, a quiet enough tree-lined street of Victorian houses just a stone’s throw from Shepherds Bush Market and now Europe’s largest shopping center, Westfield—although Ellen had never felt the urge to venture there, despite Charlie’s tales of the endless retail and junk-food opportunities that he and his friends had discovered. Nick had chosen this road as the location of their home not only because he’d fallen so in love with the dilapidated old house but because it had residents’ parking only, and a bus that went straight to a good school passed regularly at the bottom of the road. When they had first moved there, Ellen had wheeled Charlie around the market in his buggy every day it was on, more just to see the colors, hear the noises, and smell the smells than anything else. It had been a long time since they had done that together. Now, Ellen was content to get everything she needed delivered to her door.

  A sudden breeze wafted in through the crack in the sash window that Ellen had left open through the night in concession to the stifling heat, carrying with it the scent of privet hedge and hot tarmac that brought her mind instantly back to that last morning with Nick.

  He’d been sitting on the edge of his bed, fussing about which underwear to put on.

  “Does it matter?” Ellen remembered laughing, stroking his back. “Who’s going to see it but me?”

  Nick had twisted to smile at her over his shoulder. “I always promised my granny that if they ever had to scrape me up off a road, I wouldn’t bring shame on the family. Seriously, I’ve got this big meeting today—I think a man should be dressed to impress from the inside out.”

  “Do you have to get up right now?” Ellen had asked tentatively. Seduction was not one of her natural talents, and she had been unthinkingly brushed off by Nick enough times in the past to feel all the more hesitant about suggesting they share some intimate time together.

  “Yep,” Nick had said, standing up, pulling the chosen pair of boxers over his buttocks. “Lots to do today, love.” He’d bent and kissed her on the forehead before retreating to the bathroom to shave.

  If only he’d taken the hint, Ellen thought wistfully. If only she’d been a little more brazen and bold, and if when he’d turned to smile at her he’d been able to discern the look in her eye. If only he’d kissed her on the lips instead of the forehead, if only she’d wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back. Then at least she would have had one more memory of him, one more memory of what it felt like to have his arms around her, his lips on her neck, the sound of his breath in her ear. But none of that had happened; he’d walked out the door a few minutes later and had never come back.

  Ellen lifted the neck of her nightshirt and peered shyly down at her breasts. They were rather fulsome, if not quite the perfectly pert twin moons that Allegra seemed to give all her heroines. Ellen was secretly proud of them, although she did not feel the need to squeeze every inch of cleavage out of them and put it on display like her sister. Nick had loved her breasts, he had loved all of her body, and when they were first married, his adoration had made her glory in the swell of her bottom, the reach of her hips, and the girth of her thighs. Ellen closed her eyes as she remembered the touch of her husband’s fingertips draggi
ng ever so slowly over the rise and fall of her curves, his lips following in their wake. They had not made love nearly so frequently in what turned out to be the last few years of their marriage, but Ellen had accepted that, albeit regretfully, supposing that after ten years the passion and urgency that Nick had once felt for her was bound to wane a bit. In fact, if Ellen remembered correctly, which she knew that she did, on the day that Police Constable Henderson and her colleague had walked up her garden path to break the bad news, it had been almost six months since the last time. And now, now there would be no next time.

  Slowly, Ellen let her fingertips travel upward, over the thin cotton of her nightshirt, and for a brief second, for the first time in a year, she allowed herself to imagine that it was Nick who was touching her, his fingers that gently massaged her body, his lips that teased her skin, his eyes that looked up at her.…

  Ellen sat up abruptly and snatched her hands away from herself, leaping out of bed as if she’d just discovered that she’d been sharing it with something awful.

  Flustered, she pulled one of Nick’s shirts on over the pair of jeans that she had been wearing yesterday and, unable to locate her brush, ran her fingers roughly through her tangled hair. Coffee, she decided, what she needed was coffee, that would wake her up properly, because what had just happened had been a sort of waking dream, not the thoughts of her conscious mind at all—not anything that she could have controlled. Ellen scowled as she headed barefoot down the stairs, furious and embarrassed.

  It hadn’t been Nick’s face she had seen looking up at her when she closed her eyes. It had been her latest lodger’s—it had been Matt’s.

  Matt stared at his Mac screen and waited. This was only his third full day in the office, and there was no more time for special excursions today—it was press day. The deadline was fast approaching and Matt still hadn’t filed anything in the features folder. Pete had come up with a new name for the column. Apparently, Dan, the editor in chief, said that the name he’d used for the Manchester Evening News was not catchy enough and it didn’t capture the spirit of Bang It! Pete and Matt had kicked a few ideas around and then Pete had come up with an idea that he loved so much, no further discussion was needed. Matt’s new column in Bang It! magazine would be called “Wham Bam! A Single Bloke’s Guide to Sex in the City.”

  Matt told himself that it was ironic, but to be honest, there wasn’t that much about Bang It! that was ironic, except for maybe the equal-opportunities policy. Still, as Pete had said, as long as there were girls who chose to take their clothes off for money, then he was all for equality.

  The cursor hovered on Matt’s empty Mac screen. He looked around the office and saw that they all had their heads down, struggling to make the deadline. Pete had said that the pattern was always the same. On Monday, everyone was casual and relaxed. They’d often have that week’s features meeting in the pub, or at the very least get the beers delivered and sit around talking about ideas with their feet up; the magazine staff looking up stuff on the internet, inventing some new kind of office-based game—Matt himself had taken part in his first Olympic ten-meter chair dash. Tuesday, things started to get done. Wednesday, everybody remembered there was a ticking clock, and by Thursday there was no time for fooling around anymore, work got done in the run-up to deadline.

  “Don’t be late with any of your copy if you want to make it past your probation period,” Pete had warned him. “Dan doesn’t put up with that.”

  Problem was, that was exactly what Matt was worried about. He’d also been worried about running into Carla since their encounter on Monday—but then he’d realized that she was freelance. The chances of his bumping into her were slim. That left him with the dilemma about what to do. He should call her, he should at least explain to her that although he’d had a great time with her, and although she was a lovely girl, he wasn’t ready for anything serious, especially not when he’d just arrived in London. The trouble was, if he rang her up and told her that, she’d probably say she was cool with it, she’d probably suggest that they get together, no strings attached, and then after a week or two she’d want more. She’d want to plan stuff, make dates more than twenty-fours hours in advance. She’d want to introduce him to her friends, expect him to be available every Saturday night and hang out with her every Sunday. And if he reminded her that that was not at all what they had agreed on, she’d cry and get upset and tell him that she thought things had changed, that she meant something to him. Inevitably he’d end up hurting her anyway. No, if he rang her, if he slipped into that mistake, he’d be breaking his first rule, which was never to date a girl more than three times. Any more than that and they thought you were in the dreaded R word, no matter how clear you were that you weren’t up for it.

  He could visualize exactly what his first column should be—cocky jack-the-lad steps off the train and into a hot-girl’s bed. He should write about his technique, how he’d made the moves on Carla, how he’d let her think it was her plan to get drunk in the June sunshine and her idea to drag him back to her place. He’d lie about how voracious she had been in bed, transforming their brief encounter from one that had been sweet and hesitant to one of a passion-fueled frenzy of lusty sex. He’d have to boost Carla’s assets by a couple of cup sizes and make her a good deal more experienced in certain areas than she was, too.

  Still, it did seem a little too caddish, even for him, to write about a girl quite so soon after the event. Especially a girl like Carla, who didn’t really seem the type to be out looking for casual sex. From what he could tell, it was more likely that he’d caught her unawares amid what Matt thought was probably an uncharacteristic bout of spontaneity.

  His mind made up, Matt took his laptop out of his bag and opened up the file in which he saved all his columns. He found one of his very first pieces and sent it to the desktop of his Mac. Rehashing an old piece was not how he wanted to begin his career at Bang It! And he was well aware that if Pete or Dan found out, he could well be ending it before it even began. He liked Carla enough not to turn her into trash. Not just yet.

  “So you nailed the little makeup girl on your first day then?” Pete arrived at his desk in a fog of sweat and cigarette smoke. “Impressive.”

  “A gentleman never talks.” Matt gave him a well-practiced “of course I did” smirk.

  “No need to be coy about it, it’s all over the place. She told Suze, Dan’s PA, and Suze told everyone else.”

  “Really?” Matt shifted in his seat. Carla wasn’t as comfortably distant as he had hoped after all.

  “She raved about you, mate—you never put ‘gentle and considerate lover’ on your CV.” Pete chuckled to himself, catching the eye of Raffa, a fellow features writer, who grinned in reply.

  “Bollocks!” Matt’s reaction was instinctive. “She was mad for it, mate, practically dragged me off the street—I didn’t have a chance to be gentle or considerate. She had my pants off in less than a minute—and hers! That girl was ravenous!”

  “Any good?” Pete asked him flatly. “You’ll have to tell Keith in production, he’s been trying and failing to get in her knickers for weeks, poor sod. Reckons he really likes her.”

  “Mate, top marks for enthusiasm.” Matt winked. “Besides, we all know there are some things that it’s difficult to get wrong, know what I mean?”

  Pete and Greg the layout guy laughed.

  “So, you going to see her again?”

  “No; it was just for fun, she knows that.”

  “You sure?” Pete asked. “Suze seems to think she thinks you’re the next big thing in her life.”

  Matt shrugged. “I just got here. I’m not looking for anything serious, I told her that up front.”

  “Well, you got an office full of people waiting to read your write-up. You know what? You should award her marks out of ten—that would be a laugh.”

  “Great idea,” Matt said. “Will do.”

  He watched Pete walk away and after a moment closed the column he�
�d been about to rewrite. He had no choice now. He’d have to start from scratch.

  CHAPTER

  Seven

  She’s a freak,” Charlie hissed as he peered at Allegra Howard through the kitchen window. “And she smells funny.”

  “She is not a freak, and don’t use that word!” Ellen chided. “She’s an old lady and she smells of lavender. Admittedly rather a lot of lavender.”

  “A freakish amount of lavender, one might say, hey, Charles?” Hannah put in, digging Charlie in the ribs, the pair of them giggling like cohorts.